Burglaries and Lies Paved a Path to Prison

A web of criminal conspiracy to discredit the church's foes
resulted in 5-year sentences for 11 defendants.

(Sunday, 24 June 1990, page A39:2)

It began with the title of a fairy tale -- Snow White.

That was the benign code name Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard
gave to an ominous plan that would envelop his church in scandal and
send its upper echelon to prison, a plan rooted in his ever-deepening
fears and suspicions.

Snow White began in 1973 as an effort by Scientology through
Freedom of Information proceedings to purge government files of what
Hubbard thought was false information being circulated worldwide to
discredit him and the church. But the operation soon mushroomed into a
massive criminal conspiracy, executed by the church's legal and
investigative arm, the Guardian Office.

Under the direction of Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, the Guardian
Office hatched one scheme after another to discredit and unnerve
Scientology's foes across the country. Guardian Office members were
trained to lie, or in their words, "to outflow false data
effectively." They compiled enemy lists and subjected those on the
lists to smear campaigns and dirty tricks.

Their targets were in the government, the press, the medical
profession, wherever a potential threat surfaced.

The Guardian Office saved the worst for author Paulette Cooper of
New York City, whose scathing 1972 book, "The Scandal of Scientology,"
pushed her to the top of the church's roster of enemies.

Among other things, Cooper was framed on criminal charges by
Guardian Office members, who obtained stationery she had touched and
then used it to forge bomb threats to the church in her name.

"You're like the Nazis or the Arabs -- I'll bomb you, I'll kill
you!" warned one of the rambling letters.

The church reported the threat to the FBI and directed its agents
to Cooper, whose fingerprints matched those on the letter. Cooper was
indicted by a grand jury not only for the bomb threats, but for lying
under oath about her innocence.

Two years later, the author's reputation and psyche in tatters,
prosecutors dismissed the charges after she had spent nearly $20,000
in legal fees to defend herself and $6,000 on psychiatric treatment.

It seemed that no plan against perceived enemies was too ambitious
or daring.

In Washington, Scientology spies penetrated such high-security
agencies as the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service
to find what they had on Hubbard and the church.

In nighttime raids, they rifled files and photocopied mountains of
documents, many of which the church had unsuccessfully sought under
the federal Freedom of Information Act.

The thefts were inside jobs; the Guardian Office had planted one
agent in the IRS as a clerk typist and another in the Justice
Department as the personal secretary of an assistant U.S. attorney who
was handling Freedom of Information lawsuits filed by Scientology.

So bold had they become that one Guardian Office operative slipped
into an IRS conference room and wired a bugging device into a wall
socket before a crucial meeting on Scientology was to be convened. The
operative rigged the device so he could eavesdrop over his car's FM
radio.

The U.S. was losing a war it did not even know it was fighting. But
that was about to change.

Two Scientologists used fake IRS credentials to gain access to
government agencies and then photocopied documents related to the
church. Their conspiracy was exposed when one of the suspects, after
11 months on the lam, became worried about his plight and confessed to
authorities, prompting the FBI to launch one of the biggest raids in
its history.

Armed with power saws, crowbars and bolt cutters, 134 agents burst
into three Scientology locations in Los Angeles and Washington.

They carted off eavesdropping equipment, burglar tools and 48,000
documents detailing countless operations against "enemies" in public
and private life.

In the end, Hubbard's wife and the others were found guilty of
charges of conspiracy and burglary. The grand jury named Hubbard as an
unindicted co-conspirator; the seized Guardian Office files did not
directly link him to the crimes and he professed ignorance of them.

In a memorandum urging stiff sentences for the Scientologists,
federal prosecutors wrote:

"The crime committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope
previously unheard of. No building, office, desk, or file was safe
from their snooping and prying. No individual or organization was free
from their despicable conspiratorial minds. The tools of their trade
were miniature transmitters, lock picks, secret codes, forged
credentials and any other device they found necessary to carry out
their conspiratorial schemes."

The 11 defendants were ordered to serve five years in federal
prison. All are now free.

Church leaders today maintain that this dark chapter in their
religion's history was the work of renegade members who, yes, broke
the law but believed they were justified because the government for
two decades had harassed and persecuted Scientology.

Boston attorney Earle C. Cooley, Scientology's national trial
counsel, said the present church management does not condone the
criminal activities of the old Guardian Office. He said that one of
Hubbard's most important dictums was to "maintain friendly relations
with the environment and the public."

"The question that I always have in my mind," Cooley said, "is for
how long a time is the church going to have to continue to pay the
price for what the (Guardian Office) did.... Unfortunately, the church
continues to be confronted with it.

"And the ironic thing is that the people being confronted with it
are the people who wiped it out. And to the church, that's a very
frustrating thing."

PHOTO: At far left, FBI agents guard the front gate of the Church
of Scientology in Hollywood during search for documents and burglary
tools in July 1977 raid. At immediate left, Mary Sue Hubbard, L. Ron
Hubbard's third wife, after sentencing for her role in theft of
government documents about the church.

Copyright (c) 1990 Times Mirror Company
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